Patrick Steele - Home of the Braves: The Battle for Baseball in Milwaukee

Bob Buege

Milwaukee has had a long and sometimes glorious baseball history. Since 1900 it is the only city in America that can lay claim to two different teams in both the National League (195365 and 1998present) and the American League (1901 and 197097). In addition, for more than half of the twentieth century, Wisconsins version of Metropolis was home to a ball club in the highest minor league, the American Association, playing their home games for appreciative crowds in splintery old Borchert Field.

The four major league franchises that called Milwaukee their home enjoyed varying degrees of success. The 1901 American League Brewers, who helped inaugurate baseballs junior circuit, lasted just one year before pulling up stakes and moving to St. Louis and becoming the Browns. Fifty-two years later they became the Baltimore Orioles, which they remain today. I wonder how many modern Milwaukee fans think of the Orioles as our team.

By every measure except longevity, Milwaukees Braves were the brightest star in the Wisconsin baseball constellation. The passage of time and the otherworldly idolatry toward the Green Bay Packers have obscured how amazing the Miracle of Milwaukee truly was. What happened inside Milwaukee County Stadium and throughout Wisconsin from, say, 1953 to 1957 was without precedent or parallel in the history of professional sports.

On April 8, 1953, the day the Milwaukee Braves arrived in their new home city for the first time, they were greeted by an army of enthusiasts at the North Western depot and loaded into open convertibles for a motorcade down Wisconsin Avenue. At the Schroeder Hotel they were ushered into a ballroom festooned with holiday decorations, featuring a gigantic Christmas tree surrounded by gift-wrapped presents for every man on the roster: shaving kits, theater passes, cuff links, wallets, fishing lures, underwear, pen and pencil sets, you name it. The players thought they had died and gone to heaven.

That night the new Milwaukee Braves met the public at a lively rally inside a packed Milwaukee Arena. Of course, Governor Vernon Thompson and Mayor Frank Zeidler took their places among the speakers, but the crowd reserved its loudest applause for three menmanager Charlie Grimm, Miller Brewing Company president Fred Miller, and Braves owner Lou Perini.

Grimm had been the manager of the American Association Brewers in Borchert Field during the 1940s and along with charismatic owner Bill Veeck had won the hearts of the city with a mixture of high jinx and solid, pennant-winning baseball. Miller was a selfless civic leader who generally received credit for persuading Perini to uproot his Boston Braves losers and move them to the unknown hinterlands of Wisconsin. And then there was Perini.

Lou Perini was a Boston-area native and a self-made millionaire. While the Braves were building a World Series contender and ultimately a champion, Perinis construction company was busy excavating a large portion of the St. Lawrence Seaway. He was familiar to Milwaukee baseball fans, having purchased the minor league Brewers effective October 1, 1946. Perini needed a viable farm club at the AAA level, so he bought one. Simple as that. He used his wealth to leverage his needs, not necessarily by flaunting it but certainly never by concealing or underplaying it.

There was a story told about Perini trying to sign teenaged Johnny Antonelli, a cant-miss left-handed pitcher in the days before there was a free agent draft. Antonellis father, who owned a construction company, was playing hard-to-get with Perini, boasting about his own business and telling Perini, I own two steam shovels. How many do you have? Perini paused before answering, Im not sure. I think about fifty. Antonelli signed with the Braves for a reputed $65,000, the largest bonus up to that time.

Perini was also a visionary. In January 1948 he delivered a talk to the Milwaukee Athletic Club in which he expounded on his view of big league baseball in the not-too-distant future. He cited pressure from the Pacific Coast League to expand the major leagues by adding four West Coast citiesSan Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Hollywood (maybe he meant Anaheim). But adding four cities would give us ten teams in each league, he said, and we cant run with ten teams. Instead, two more would need to be added, to have twelve in each league. Perini stated boldly, Milwaukee will be in a major league within five years. Five years later, in 1953, he was right on the money.

Speaking of money, local citizens and county officials made certain that neither the Braves ownership nor their ballplayers suffered for lack of it. Even with just a few weeks for presale of tickets, overwhelming demand all but guaranteed profitability at the gate. Whats more, the Milwaukee County Board did itspart by crafting a lease on County Stadium that charged the Braves a nominal amount: one thousand dollars. Thats for the season, not per game. Even the woebegone Boston Braves could have made that payment.

And the players? Commercial establishments and fans could not do enough for them. Automobiles were provided free of charge for their use by Dodge dealer Wally Rank. Free gasoline, free dry-cleaning service, free wrist watches, all were theirs for the asking. Eddie Mathews recalled that he and about a dozen of the Braves rented rooms at the Wisconsin Hotel in downtown Milwaukee. For every game a pitcher won, Mathews explained, he got a case of Miller High Life. If you hit a home run, you got a case of Miller High Life. Theyd deliver it right to your room at the hotel. Well, I had twenty-seven home runs at the All-Star break, and that was just me. We had to rent another room just for the beer because besides Miller there were other breweriesBlatz, Schlitz, Pabst...

Mathews and his teammates reciprocated in a couple ways. First and foremost, they played top-notch baseball starting on day one and lasting many years into the future. They never did experience a losing season. Second, the ballplayers made themselves available to the fans. They lived among the fans in normal neighborhoods like real, ordinary people. Everyone in town, it seemed, had some connection to a genuine Milwaukee Brave. Your cousin used to babysit for Lew Burdettes kids, or your uncle went to the same barber as Andy Pafko.